The Lee Valley White water centre is a fully man made whitewater park and in fully I mean it is built from the ground up without using any sort of previously existing waterway.  There is a base pond reservoir for the swimming poolish water from which 13 m3/s volume is made to circulate around by electric powered pumps in a 300m long with 5.5m drop concrete channel full of obstacles to create optimal waves, safe whitewater features mainly to host slalom canoeing events and do rafting, kayaking.  Sounds fun? Well in my experience for a regular nature person and most real river guides, the idea to work in such a place is not so appealing. I spent 10 month working there in 2017 so let me tell you about my insights and maybe widen your perspective on the subject.

Being in Norway as a raft guide in 2015 was my first non-Slovenian guiding summer. As I look back at it from 2020 I can see how easy my life was being in a relative low population density area, living next to farmers and taking tourists and locals rafting on the short section of the Otta river doing around 6-10 trips a week. I stayed from the middle of May till the end of September enjoying the quietness of the mountains and some easier river sections around the area also doing some cycling, canyoning, hiking and a bit of caving with Lom&Skjak Adventure working as an outdoor activity guide. One might call it adventure instructor and other similar fancy names.

Stand Up paddle boarding on white water started to became popular in the USA around  2012. That time my current boss spent his winter there getting familiar with the new way of running wild rivers. As he brought a few boards over to Europe for the upcoming summer season, we as young guides were lucky enough to get an opportunity to also start practising in the rapids.

History showed us that sport needed a few years to settle in peoples minds and also needed an enthusiastic, motivated instructor, my friend Sebastian Toth, to raise the bar and start organising guided instructional tours on surrounding lakes, on the easier white water Soca sections and also SUP Joga emerged to satisfy the premium needs of the outdoorsy tourist visiting Bovec and Soca-Valley.

Learn more about my friend, Sebastian’s enthusiasm towards white water SUP and if you are up for a challenge book your next adventure tour on bovec-sup.com

In short the Oetz river is famous for the Sicklike world class kayaking race. It was organised as an Adidas sponsored World cup event for downriver creek/river runner category for many years till 2017. Its been on hold for a while but in 2022 it was reorganised under the name of Oetz Trophy.

There are multiple sections for advanced kayakers to choose from. Not quite that much for beginners and a few for intermediate booters. We found quite big volume in our time of visit so we decided to go with a safer bit less demanding  yet rowdy looking option, to paddle the upper section of the river, a medium volume Class 4. Enjoy the footage with great local background music.